It seems that San Francisco may be the place where phones–and hearts–are destined to be left behind if Tony Bennett and modern smartphone-toting geeks are to be heard, but Boston is the place to take your passion for all things mobile that are fast and furious. Once infamous for the Tea Party that went down in US history, Boston will not only be among one of the early cities to get 4G coverage, but will also be among the early cities to get 4G service from three service providers: Clearwire/Sprint, Verizon Wireless, and MetroPCS.

Clearwire and Sprint, which is a major partner and investor in the 4G WiMax provider, will be launching their 4G network in September, which will bring faster mobile broadband support for devices like the Sprint HTC EVO 4G, Overdrive, Epic 4G, and other USB modems and data devices.

Verizon Wireless will also be joining the Boston 4G party with services expected to roll out–initially for data devices only with smartphone support later–by the end of 2010. And lastly, regional carrier MetroPCS will be blanketing Boston with 4G service in 2011.

Clearwire and Sprint will be using WiMax as the 4G protocol for their network in Boston and throughout other markets while Verizon Wireless and MetroPCS will be employing LTE technology.

Perhaps, the reason why the Apple engineer who had made headlines earlier this year had left his iPhone 4 prototype in a San Francisco bar is due to the city’s lack of 4G and also perhaps poor AT&T coverage. That phone was later discovered by a bar patron who later sold the phone to Gizmodo for $5,000, which resulted in the popular consumer electronics blog and its editor under investigation. As irony would have it, and in a twist of event, another editor of Gizmodo Brian Lam would later leave his phone at a bar and recover it, fortunately for him unlike the poor Apple engineer. Lam later tweeted: “left my phone at lunch, lady turned it in. good thing we were nice, earlier, and gave her the chair she asked for #karma.”